Business The "Lottery Ticket" Fallacy: Why Waiting Until Launch to Market is a Growth Death Sentence In the latest Zoran’s Update, the experienced industry manager Zoran Roso warns against starting to market a game too late. In his view, anyone who only begins marketing at the time of launch is essentially buying a lottery ticket. By Zoran Roso • 4 min read
Business The Helix Shift: Inside Xbox’s Aggressive Pivot to Silicon, Subscriptions, and Corporate Restructuring In this week’s “Update”, Zoran Roso analyses Microsoft’s strategic reorientation, the possible reasons behind and consequences of a spin-off, and why this move is a result of changes in the games market. By Zoran Roso • 4 min read
Business The €27 Billion Danger Zone: How the EU's Digital Fairness Act Threatens to Disintegrate the F2P Monetization Stack In 'Zoran's Update', experienced games manager Zoran Roso comments on current industry topics on LinkedIn. This time, he is looking at the issue from an industry perspective to see what consequences the EU’s plans might have on the monetisation of free-to-play games. By Zoran Roso • 4 min read
Business The 1.0 Illusion – Why Relying on a Post-Early Access Revenue Spike Is a Losing Bet In this week’s “Update”, Zoran Roso on the latest data from GameDiscoverCo, debunking the myth that an Early Access launch just generates additional revenue. The data shows, tha a 1.0 patch notes update rarely triggers a mainstream breakthrough if the upfront momentum isn't already there. By Zoran Roso • 4 min read
Business In Conversation With… Benedikt Grindel In his new ‘Update,’ brand and marketing expert Zoran Roso talks to Ubisoft Blue Byte's Benedikt Grindel about the integration of a studio, on live games, German game funding, and the fundamental changes he expects to see in the financing and monetisation of AAA games. By Zoran Roso • 9 min read
Business The Art of the Acquisition: Why Scaling Successfully Requires a Translator, Not an Enforcer In this week’s “Update”, Zoran Roso dives deep into the "culture overwrite" trap, the damaging corporate reflex to aggressively assimilate new acquisitions rather than protect the unique spark that made them valuable in the first place. By Zoran Roso • 3 min read
Business The Safe-Bet Crisis: Why Live-Service ”Wrappers“ Are Imploding In this week’s “Update”, Zoran Roso asks whether the industry is still designing games for pure enjoyment, and he suggests that the industry may have fallen into a dangerous corporate trap of designing for operational efficiency instead of creative taste and is facing a brutal reality check. By Zoran Roso • 4 min read
Business The 'Threequel' Trap: Why Video Game Trilogies Often Falter at the Finish Line In 'Zoran's Update', experienced games manager Zoran Roso comments on current industry topics on LinkedIn. This time's topic: Why a rash decision to ‘go bigger’ following a successful IP debut leads to the core of the game being lost by the third instalment at the latest. By Zoran Roso • 5 min read
People In Conversation with… Paul Sulyok In his new ‘Update,’ marketing expert Zoran Roso talks to Green Man Gaming CEO Paul Sulyok about his non-traditional journey from the British Army to the helm of a digital distribution giant, and how his philosophy of decentralized decision-making is shaping the future of the games industry. By Zoran Roso • 8 min read
Business The End of "Steam and Pray": How data is saving indies in gaming's VC winter In 'Zoran's Update', experienced games manager Zoran Roso comments on current industry topics on LinkedIn. This time's topic: Why having a good game on Steam and hoping for a favourable algorithm is no longer enough; developers now need reliable data to survive. By Zoran Roso • 4 min read
People In Conversations with... Kevin Fryers In the new ‘Zoran's Update,’ brand and marketing expert Zoran Roso talks to Kevin Fryers about the pillars of modern game publishing, Generative AI in game development, Nostalgia, and brand building. By Zoran Roso • 13 min read
Business Escaping the "Algorithm Trap": Why Gaming Marketers Must Rebalance Brand and Performance In today’s hyper-competitive gaming and app landscape, the allure of immediate, trackable metrics is hard to resist. We optimize for clicks, obsess over Return on Ad Spend (ROAS), and pour our budgets into the bottom of the funnel. But are we sacrificing long-term IP health for short- By Zoran Roso • 4 min read
